Romulo Café @ Quezon City, Philippines

Had a long and fruitful discussion upon my arrival in Manila and before i realised, it was time for dinner. HUrahhhhh…

It was only about 6:30pm, but it was pitch dark outside ( felt like about 8pm in KL), we headed towards Romulo Café, which is a house converted into a restaurant. B&W pictures of famous head of states decorated the wall. My Filipino host told me that the restaurant is owned by the grandson of Carlos Romulo- a Filipino diplomat who served eight Filipino presidents and served as the president of the UN General Assembly from 1949 -1950.

The menu

What we had for dinner :-

Freshly popped chicharon with pinakurat vinegar ( 60P) Chincaron is pork skins/ rinds and to eat this- dip into vinegar, this vinegar is not like our usual vinegar, it’s fermented coconut sap and added with chili and natural spices. My favourite part is to dip the chicharon into the vinegar and then hear it crackle and pop, my fellow dinner commented that I have dipped them for too long , oh..no wonder it was a bit too sour la..have another chicharon ?

Crispy pata binagoongan ( P355) –pata binagoongan is pork with shrimp paste and add the element of the pork trotters being crispy..yummmm….the pork was very tender and with a saltish flavour, the Filipino shrimp paste flavor must be different from the Malaysian version if you are expencting a belacan-ish flavor. There weren’t that much of fat between the skin and the meat- so the guilt of eating this without taking out the fatty tissue was not strong

Soup – sourish soup – the sourness of the soup is supposed to be tamarind based. But the taste had more depth to it than just tamarind, papaya was one of the ingredient in this soup. This works, I like sinigang !

Ginataag Sigarillas with tinapa ( P160) , ginataag = coconut milk, sigarillas= four angle bean, tinapa =smoked fish, the four angle beans were thinly sliced and cooked in coconut milk , the taste reminded me of the gravy of ayam percik- rich and fragrant.i didn’t really got a chance to get some of the smoked fish

We had 2 different kind of rice with the dishes, garlic rice ( P35) and another reddish spicy looking rice, I was hesitant with the spicy looking rice- but was assured that Filipinos is not known for spicy food, so it would not be at all spicy – and it was not ! I prefer the garlic fried rice though

Beef Calderata with queso de bola ( P300) – , beef calderata is beef in tomato based stew , Queso de bola is translated to mean ball cheese, a round cheese produced with skimmed or semi skimmed milk from Holland. Haha..i only found out about the cheese thingy after doing a web search……so those whitish thingies where cheese and not potatoes, and I didn’t get a taste of it. Dratttt…. The stew was delicious, the beef was tender and oozing beefy flavor with each bite..

Bangus belly in banana leaves ( P275)- served with special sisig sauce. Bangus is milkfish, the milkfish belly was deep fried , fresh and crispy .This was kinda saltish after dipping in the sisig sauce.